Friday, May 25, 2012

13 Months

Dear Elle,

This week you turned 13 months old. You are in your crib right now, with the hot pink flowered sheets, taking a nap and I had a few minutes to write to you to tell you what you have been up to. Right before you went down for your nap we were reading some books as we always do and you kept putting your little toes onto the edge of the book and then creeping them up the pages right into the book crease and i would close the book on your foot pretending I didn't know it was in there, and you would fall into a fit of giggles. These little games you play. You also don't like to have your feet wrapped up in a blanket when you are going to sleep. You like the blanket wrapped around you, but you like your feet poking out at the bottom, just like your mom.

Yesterday I was making dinner and you were running around pretending to talk on your cell phone and then all of a sudden you were gone from the kitchen for a few minutes and you were very quiet which was my sign to come and see what you were doing, and i found you standing up in the middle of our bed! You had climbed up all there all by yourself! When you saw me you smiled and then fell straight back into the pillows laughing the whole time. And jumped up and did it again. And again! You have your dad's sense of adventure, that's for sure. Yesterday you dove head first off the little chair at the library on the carpet and got rug burn on the tip of your nose!

We are working on more signs for you to do, like milk, all finished, cereal, and I need help. Now you just laugh when I do them but you will get them and it will help us to communicate. You do "more" all the time now, like when the music stops playing, when you are going to be and we have already read 5 books, you sign to me, "more", because apparently you weren't done listening to stories just yet, you really want to know what happens at the end of Hand, Hand, Finger, Thumb for the 700th time.

You know how to give kisses now but they are rare and hard to come by. But you kiss me sometimes. It's so sweet. Mostly you just want us to kiss your stuffed animals, you walk over with your puppy or Hello Kitty and you make a "mmmmmmmm" sound, which mean, "kiss it!" Last week at Stew Lenoard's you went up to the big bins of stuffed animals and pulled out each one at a time to give a good long hug and then put them back and went onto the next one. You got a little yellow shopping cart from Tia and you put all your stuffed animals in it and take them for walks around the living room, it's so cute. You have a hippo, and owl, a bunny, a puppy, a duck, a lamb and a baby dolly. Sometimes you stop and take out one to hug and then put them back and keep going.

It's starting to get warm now and we have been out on the boat a few times and you can barely keep your eyes open out there with the rocking and the lull of the engine. But you hang in as long as you can, driving the boat with Dad, playing with your toys, holding your dolly and showing her around the lake. You played hard all morning and then stretched out for a long afternoon nap.